193. How Risk Stacks Up in COVID-19

So stack risk is kind of an unusual term to use in the clinic.

So I like to think of it as accumulated risk or risks that add up that would dictate disease progression.

And in this case, it is for COVID-19.

So stack risk for COVID-19 comes from a study that was published this year in March, and it was on almost 400,000 veterans.

And they looked at 14 risk factors.

Let's see how many I can name.

So they looked at age, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, vaccination status, smoking status, and chronic lung and kidney disease.

And there were a few more.

So what they found is that the more risk factors you had or comorbidities you had, you had an increased risk for disease progression.

And that is not only severity, but it also could be hospitalization and death.

And that was within a 30-day period.

The other thing that was interesting, they found that the combination of these risk factors was important.

So they found that hypertension, heart disease, vaccination status, and smoking were even more significant, especially when they were combined together.

So, it's a great study because it's something we can use in practice, right? We usually think of how does the patient feel when they first get COVID-19, and we really don't think about disease progression, what it is that could make them at risk for increased severity of illness.

Yeah, I think patients oftentimes don't realize all of these things by themselves or combined can really put them at a risk for developing severe outcomes from COVID.

And so how can we best explain to our patients what really puts us all at risk for outcomes that are negative, not just COVID, but even other diseases?

Okay, so that's a really good point because typically we go in and we look at what's happening at the present moment, right? So let's say the patient comes in, they have a real mild case of COVID-19.

And so they think that it's all good.

I feel okay, I'm gonna get through this smooth as ice.

But then what we educate them about is how those comorbidities put them at risk.

And the more comorbidities they have, the higher their risks are.

So even just having two comorbidities, you have twice the risk of disease progression.

So what that means is that helps us develop a care plan that takes that into consideration.

Now we're looking at the whole patient.

We're looking at their age and the medications they're on and their vaccination status in this case.